Destiny Farm curator Stephen Barton began taking in injured wildlife more than three decades ago, often finding them through his employment as a firefighter and truck driver.

He moved to the Riverland almost 10 years ago and more recently started up the wildlife rescue farm near Loxton.

"In the last two years we've had a number of larger wildlife parks closing down, like Bredls through illness in their families, at Murray Bridge, Dundees closed down to put in a development, so we took on a lot of animals, we took them on at a very fast pace, and now we're looking at opening a full blown zoo," he said.

"A lot of them would have been put down, nobody's going to take on 20 kangaroos, nobody's going to take on a water buffalo that eats 30kg a day and a lot of these animals would have been taken away, so a lot of these animals wouldn't have been in the Riverland anymore, or be put down."

As well as operating the farm, Stephen has been providing a free snake-catching service to the Riverland.

He recently sought council support to train others to ease his workload, but has had a mixed response.

"I am the only snake catcher in the Riverland area, for the three councils, and we had three call outs yesterday, to try to cope with that plus run this place is extremely hard."